im doing about 38k when we wipe, we're getting pretty close to killing it on 25m heroic, but im finding outside berserk, ive just become accustomed to the extra timing on rip and my uptimes are shoddy especially since I have to go bear for the start, middle and end (3 times)

I also completely swapped reforges to max my mastery instead of haste, even though its only about 1.00 energy loss per tick, feels so slow lol

With a little practice it's easy to cut the time spent in bear getting LDoA to a minimum. I find that the debuff goes out exactly when Thrall says "shield them", so I just stay in cat until he says "servants of earth, hear my call" and then hit it. Just don't get caught in the middle of a GCD.

Serringa wrote:With a little practice it's easy to cut the time spent in bear getting LDoA to a minimum. I find that the debuff goes out exactly when Thrall says "shield them", so I just stay in cat until he says "servants of earth, hear my call" and then hit it. Just don't get caught in the middle of a GCD.

That is exactly when I shift to bear. Then I look for the debuff and swap back.

40 seconds for frenzied regen, 24 for barkskin and 24 for survival instincts with that.

is the key for consistently high numbers the trinkets and the DW weapon for even normal, as I'm sitting around 30k on my guilds kills, I've let my bleeds fall off once or twice each kill . But i know some druids are pulling ya know 35k+

I stuck with the heavy haste and hit expert capped for Ultraxion. Swapping in glyph of manglebot was a definite increase over TF or BL, was really happy with the performance of it. Just make sure to keep your bleeds clipped nicely and Sr up as much as possible and that will help.

We had our first heroic 25m kill last night, video will be up shortly. I ranked 17th at 38.8k. Played around with Mew and got a Mastery > Crit > Haste stat priority. I went for a mastery heavy build, and got rid of as much expertise as I could. My uptimes weren't -great- but they weren't too bad either all things considered. My overall boss uptime was 99.2%.

96.9% Rip uptime - 97.1% Rake uptime - SR 93.5% uptime

Like Woem said, mangle glyph was a big DPS increase.

On our earlier attempts I went bear at the beginning for the extra buff but honestly if I just barkskin + SI I'm fine and never die. I lost a lot of DPS since we lusted + prepotted at the beginning when I was in bear form.

Looking it over, my uptimes are all 97% and up except for SR which is at 80%. I ranked 40th. I pop my second pot with my "pot+TF+zerk" macro making sure TF is off cd (we hero at the start) and I make sure to have a TF'd rip up going into ferocious bite spam sub 60%. Despite all this I'm 2k behind a top 10 rank, is this a gearing issue? I have 4pc with 2/4 pieces being heroic. Currently I'm using the reg Yor'sahj staff since Kiril hasn't dropped for us more than once (bear tank took it) and I've reforged to a haste heavy build with mastery and crit following in that order. I don't have Vial of Shadows yet and I'm not in full epic gems. Am I doing something wrong or is it just gear at this point? In full epic gems I'd have about 110 more Agility, that plus Kiril and Vial don't seem to be a 2k difference, I don't think.

Any help would be appreciated, I wanna break that top 10 and feel I can, just don't know what I can do to get there.

Just a heads up for people with two ferals for the Mass Regen buff: if you cast mass regen on people while a different mass regen is up it does nothing. In other words they will keep the original buff with how much time is left and the buff will not refresh to a new 40 seconds (or less if you don't have the defender buff).

I'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out how I can maximize my dps higher than I have. My raid leader determined that in order to down heroic 25M Ultraxion, we need to average about 34k dps per dpser. I managed to get to around 33k average for all the attempts of the night. I got LDoA just for the safety net and to fully utilize the 4pc T13 during the last part of the fight, but we only got to that point a few times. I do switch my Bloodletting glyph out for mangle. I was considering reforging to hit/exp caps (right now I'm going with Rawr's suggestion to forsake all hit/exp for mastery, crit, and haste). But then I saw Mangle's log a few posts back and see he's doing the same thing as I am, with minimum hit/exp, and he's pulling 38k dps. So I'm confused as to whether that's even the right direction.

I took a look at your guilds 3 best attempts (4, 6, 9). I did see improvment as you progressed. By try 9 you were doing 35k. Here are a few things you can look at.

- Yellow attack usage. While it got better over the night, you were not using Mangle or bear ablities enough. Having to go bear for cooldowns does hurt, but even in bear form don't stop attacking. If you swap over you should be Thrashing, Mauling and using FF as well as Mangle.

- FF fell off. Don't let this happen. You should work it out between you and the other feral so this doesn't happen. Make sure you have some time of tracking to see how much time is left and don't let it fall off. Every time you go bear form don't forget FF does real decent damage for 0 rage.

- Double Pot (or pot at all). In the logs I don't see you using a potion at all. I know that if you pre pot and don't use a second one it won't show up in the logs. However since you used your second Berserk you should have been using that second potion as you only get 2 Berserks on this fight.

- Tigers Fury usage. On a stand still fight like this you should be using TF off cooldown. If you need to bleed a little energy thats fine, but don't put it off more then a second or two. On your best attempt you should have been able to TF at least 2 more times, maybe 3.

- Bleed uptimes. Until the end of the night bleed up times were very low. By the last attempt you had improved a lot, but it still could use some work. Even if you are reforged all haste bleeds still make up a TON of your damage. Rake should be simple to keep in the 95% uptime rate and Rip in the low 90's.

- Swap out the Feral Charge glyph and put in the FB glyph. You can't FC and the extra healing is always welcome.

Now having to swap to bear for FR is a pretty swift kick to the nads of your dps. Most Raid Leaders don't fully understand how much it costs us to actually swap to bear and back. In all honesty your raid group may benefit more from you being allowed to dps non stop instead of going bear. If you are stuck and don't have a choice I would recomend you do the following:- Max out Furor. Having to swap kills dps as it is. If you have to wait for a full energy bar as well it's even worse.- Glyph FR. With the buffs your healers get 30% more healing when active will be way better then the ticking heal from the unglyphed ability.- When stuck in bear make use of all of your highest damaging abilites. Mangle, Maul, FF and Thrash are all good options. I wouldn't use Demo Roar as the other tanks should be putting it up and it gives you no dps boost for the GCD you spend.

I know this is a huge wall of text, but over all you arn't doing a bad job and over the night you showed improvment. The more you do the fight the better you will be able to refine the use of all your ablities and the correct timing. Best of luck next week!

EDIT: I just realized how badly this post was edited. That will teach me to try and write good after helping someone move for the last 9 hours. Time to pass out I will fix it later.

I also glanced at your logs and Tinder gave spot on analysis. I just want to point out two things:

First the 4pcT13 buff grants 50% of the effect to the raid, resulting in 15% increased healing, not the 30% which the casting Feral receives.Secondly, to add on to the point of swapping this glyph in you should mention that when FR is glyphed you can shift back into kitty as soon as it's cast. That extra 20 seconds of kitty time will undoubtedly show up in your performance as a damage dealer.

If those changes alone do not produce the results you're seeking, consider changing your reforges. Capping hit and expertise should show a definitive increase on this fight since SR buffs white swings by 80% and there isn't any movement. I would also stack more haste and less mastery for this encounter for a variety of reasons. Lastly, I'm not quite sure why you reforge out of haste and into crit on your shoulders since this doesn't seem to fit the overall scheme at all.

On a side note, I hate you for your luck with gear. My raid has only seen one Wrath of Unchaining drop, and to make matters worse we're a 10 man with a Feral, a rogue, and an enhance. Also we're yet to see a kiril....

~Para

Last edited by Paramount on Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks for the detailed input. I'll definitely address these points next time. I definitely could do a lot better on yellow attacks, both in cat and bear form. I notice that I get into a sort of groove when I'm dpsing, and any time I have to change it up, there's a few seconds where I sort of sit there dumbly while thinking about what I need to do. I really need to work on that.

I didn't notice FF fell off, usually I'm pretty good about that. I'll be setting up a power aura or something to warn me when it's not up.

Double pots are something of a new concept for me, so I'm not really in the practice of using them both on the pull and during the fight. In fact I've never used pots at all until very recently. I guess it's because way back in TBC, using items like pots would kick you out of cat form, and that has me hard-wired to not use items at all. I'm also pretty bad about eating my warlock cookie. So to be clear, it should be used with berserk, and not with heroism? I know that using berserk during heroism is a nono, unless that's changed.

Can I survive the Hour of the Twilight without going bear, with just barkskin/survival instincts alone? I know the non-feral druids need to switch to bear for the extra hp, but I never actually thought about if I didn't have to do so myself. If that's true, that will certainly be a great help.

I also hadn't realized that glyphing Frenzied Regen would make it so I didn't have to stay a bear for the effect to persist. I know from experience that the HoT from unglyphed FR will fall off if you switch to cat early. You're saying that's not the case if you glyph it? If so, that's very nice.

Load yourself up in mew and have a look. It really will come down to the gear you are in. Dispite having the perfect storm of terrible RNG ever it still came out pretty good. I ranked 175 (25 Heroic) this week with a Mastery > Crit > Haste build. Only 1 ability (white attacks) had a positive crit rate. Everything else was 5%-10% below my raid buffed crit rate and I didn't get many OOC procs (1 every 19 seconds).

Really though use Mew with your current gear and try some different reforges and see what you get.

Strange thing happened to me last week on the ultraxion - I've managed to actually use Feral Charge by mistake and I landed under the boss. I didn't have the time to check if the shred is working from the spot I landed on, and I regeret that - beacause in similar situation, fighting Al'ar in the Tempest Keep you can FC to him when he's channeling a spell after going to next platform and you actually CAN shred him in the spot you've landed on.

Alas, I've tried FC yesterday and it didn't send me flying this time. Dunno, maybe it was just a bug? Did it happen to any of you?

V.

Someday, someone will best me. But it won't be today - and it won't be you.

Just out of interest, if you have the Last Defender debuff, what do you suggest as the best way to track the FR cooldown? Power Aura? Just looking for ideas as I'm about to attempt HM 25 tonight for the first time.

I imagine I start in cat, pre pot, FF, Mangle, SR, Rake, Mangle and then go bear, Lacerate, Maul, Frenzied Regen and then go cat and Berserk. Then it's a matter of soaking when it's my turn and doing a FR every 90 secs? Interested as to when people choose to time their FR's.

FR use should totally be at your healing teams discression. If you are soaking Barkskin and SI together will work just fine and will always be up when it's your turn to soak (every 2 minutes when your debuff falls off).

What we did to help healing for end of fight is to have all of the healers be in the normal relm when we pull and hit BL. That way all of the DPS going balls out right at the start, but the healers don't get sated and can use it as a healing cooldown at the end of the fight. To take some of the pressure of those first few seconds we have the tanks hit their raid cooldowns on the pull because they get instantly reset as soon as the LDoA debuff gets applied.

As for tracking, I myself like Raven. It is an addon that lets you make custom cooldown bars and bar groups. You can track it with just about anything though, Class Timers, Need to Know, Power Auras, and many others. It's really about how you like to see it.